Nativo’s study examining native advertising spending from covers the period from Q1’2014 through Q4’2016.

The authors analysed ad spend across their entire marketplace, identifying key trends from major verticals such as automotive, travel, CPG, health & fitness, finance and insurance, tech (both B2B and B2C), entertainment, and food and beverage.

The report asserts that overall, native spend is on the rise: across all verticals in Nativo’s marketplace, spend increased by 600 per cent from 2014 to 2016. This further validates eMarketer’s recent projections that by 2018, marketers plan to lean further into native — US native ad spend will reach more than $28 billion.

But beyond the broader positive outlook for native, never before had ad spend trends been broken down by specific verticals. The industry only had access to vertical trends anecdotally.

Year over year, food & drink grew their share of native ad spend the most by 9 per cent. Food & drink is followed by travel and business, which both grew their share by 4 per cent.

Automotive (OEM), tech B2B, entertainment, tech B2C and finance and insurance, all early adopters of native advertising in 2014, saw their aggregate share of budget decline by 20 per cent, from 57 per cent in 2014 to 37 per cent in 2016.

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